Mobile BI – There are apps and web pages rendering support so that reports can be published and accessed across mobile platforms.

Natural Language Query – I have not dug up an article on this but is a new natural language query capabilities which allows users to ask questions to get answers. Users will enter questions and then Power BI will interpret and generate answers using interactive charts and graphs based on available data.

Frankly I need to spin up on this a little bit more, but wanted to get some quick information out to folks…

However I like to make clear that Office 365 has always been able to support 2FA and this was achievable through configuration of federation with ADFS (or other STS servers). So it is possible to integrated RSA, smart cards, etc. but the policy for third-party 2FA is managed by the customer and enforced through ADFS (or other STS servers). The new Office 365 MFA offering discussed here will be immensely valuable to customers who do not have federated authentication and are using Cloud Based IDs. If you do not know much about Office 365 authentication, I recommend you start with the Service Description and read some of the linked articles - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-user-account-management.aspx.

Another important announcement discussed is that Office 2013 client applications “native multi-factor authentication for applications such as Outlook, Lync, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PowerShell, and OneDrive for Business, with a release date planned for later in 2014”. This will work with this new solution Office 365 MFA as well as third-party 2FA solutions that have been implemented on-premise (i.e. RSA, smart cards, etc.).

Another new feature of Exchange Online Protection (EOP) was recently added called Directory Based Edge Blocking (DBEB). With this, all messages directed for email addresses that do not exist in your organization will be blocked on the edge. The message will be blocked and it will not be processed. Otherwise if the message is bound for a valid email address in your organization, the message will continue through connection and content filtering (anti-spam, etc.) policies you have configured in EOP. This allows for more efficiency.

For Exchange Online customers using EOP apparently the change will not be too noticeable. Messages bound for invalid email address was being blocked in Transport rules. With the introduction of DBEB, the block is moved forward in the filtering process. This will be reflected in reporting and there is some planned additional reporting that will be released in the future to differentiate between DBEB and SMTP blocking.

Reflection: I had been waiting for public announcement and it was pretty obvious it was coming down when we saw that no new additions or investments (of any importance) we made into InfoPath 2013 and InfoPath Form Services.

Now InfoPath has a special place in my heart and I will say that my love for InfoPath put me where I am today. Really. When I first started at RDA Corp back in 2005 I was just a .NET engineer. My first project I was thrown into an engagement where I had to learn InfoPath 2003, K2.net 2003, BizTalk 2004 and SharePoint 2003 in a week and make them work. That project change my life. I built this solution (with some smart people) which eventually was the finalist for solution of the year at the Microsoft World Wide Partner conference. It had tons of InfoPath components which were hooked on top of a VAX mainframe. I subsequently got hooked into the developer community in ways I had not done before. I starting doing more and more InfoPath and K2 projects and then I got really hooked into SharePoint; the rest is history. I was able to get a job as a SharePoint TSP at Microsoft which has transcended into a career doing Office 365. I can say, it was InfoPath that sparked my love for the Microsoft productivity stack to build business solutions. I started saying “why do I need to build solutions from scratch when I can take all the Microsoft solutions together and build something”.

Over the years on this blog I had wrote extensively on how to do development, best practices and build solutions for InfoPath - http://www.astaticstate.com/search/label/InfoPath. My first blogs in September 2007 were focused on InfoPath. I thought it was a great solution with SharePoint to build business forms and automate them using simple or complex business processes. Reflecting back, I found that InfoPath did a lot of great things for standard to moderately complex forms but when you brush up against the edges (which is what I had to do a lot as a consultant) you found tough things you would be able to resolve with a custom web form. I would always be put into these debates with colleagues on this topic.

Where Do We Go From Here: I believe Microsoft product team is making the right decision. InfoPath had its day, it is a great concept behind it to create forms quickly, extract the XML, shred it and sent it to a database. However today there are so many development frameworks for rapid development and Microsoft is going to continue to create new solutions that will help customers build forms and process automated solutions. Support for InfoPath is not going away anytime soon, they are keeping support through April 2023 (not a typo) and I still say InfoPath is a great solution, just nothing new is being introduced. They noted they plan to create some migration scenarios in Q4 of CY2014, so I will be keeping an eye out for that.

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About Me

I currently work for Office 365 as a Principle PM on the Office 365 Gov cloud team. I spent my first 7 years at Microsoft as an Office 365 technical specialist leading sales efforts with US Federal. Prior to Microsoft I worked for a Microsoft Gold partner called RDA as a Project Manager. Prior to that, I was a software engineer working with Big 4 management consulting firms. Over the past years I have done a lot of work with Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Skype, Silverlight, K2, BizTalk, InfoPath, ASP.net, etc. I have written a Wrox book about SharePoint BPA technologies and one of the solutions was a finalist at Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year conference. I am a Virginia Tech alumnus completing both my undergrad and masters in Information Technology. I play ice hockey and lacrosse on a regular basis and I am huge Washington Capitals fan.